Guild Wars 2

Following the text on the forum from 2013 (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Let-s-talk-Interrupts) Is it really worth to take Power block instead of Mental Anguish (because I doubt many people take IB)

Yes, Mesmer has probably most available interrupts (typical build will have at least 2-3 from weapons F3 and MoD) but well… to use it you have to interrupt first. Most abilities have casting time below 1s which making purposeful interruption quite difficult (especially if you don’t live in USA and have to play on 200ms+ latency… kitten you geography!). On the other hand adding 10s cooldown to interrupted ability is BIG…

So in short words: Is it worth to take and hope that you will interrupt something or take something else?

Most healing skills are pretty interruptible, plus almost all of them makes you glow blue so they’re obvious too. Even with latency (I play with 300ms) it isn’t difficult to interrupt skills with obvious tells.

And setting an enemy’s healing skill on a 15s CD when they need it now is priceless. The damage and Weakness is just icing.

It goes back to why people took Halting Strike (the damage part of PB) over Mental Torment (+20% Mind Wrack damage) pre-patch: it’s a way to diversify your damage a bit.

Power Block makes Diversion a damaging ability. It also makes both of double-ranged shatter’s #5 skills do big damage.

Hitting an interrupt can be tricky, but quite often the best time to shatter is in response to an enemy’s attempted burst. At which point they’re rapidly spamming skills trying to hit you as hard and fast as possible. I’ve had a ton of luck with Power Block in that situation.

Plus a lot of professions use channelled skills for their burst which is really easy to interrupt.

Embolism.8106:

Most healing skills are pretty interruptible, plus almost all of them makes you glow blue so they’re obvious too.

Most?.. Then why almost every time when I try to interrupt enemy’s heal they pop out text like “Block”, “Evade” or just instacast?

SappFire.5793:

Embolism.8106:

Most healing skills are pretty interruptible, plus almost all of them makes you glow blue so they’re obvious too.

Most?.. Then why almost every time when I try to interrupt enemy’s heal they pop out text like “Block”, “Evade” or just instacast?

Because most doesn’t mean all. You don’t try to interrupt Shelter for example, unless you can penetrate Blocks (hello Well of Precognition).

Embolism.8106:

Most healing skills are pretty interruptible.

Let’s see:

Guard: Shelter
Warrior: Signet

Thief: Withdraw
Engi: Healing Turret (okay, it’s interruptable if you know he’ll use it when low and just coming out from a big daze/stun.. but still a skill with fast casting)
Ranger: Okay, it’s ruptable

Ele: Signet (and Attu change to Water/Dodge are “pretty hard” to rupt)
Necro: Easy with CoCo
Mesmer: if (s)he’s not in stealth (I mean mesmer has so little stealth uptime it’s hard to use healing skill during it, right?) you can rupt (tho Mirror and Pistol rupt are not best friends)

Nope, I don’t think that most healing skills are ruptable, I would better say that there are some you can rupt.

Embolism.8106:

SappFire.5793:

Embolism.8106:

Most healing skills are pretty interruptible, plus almost all of them makes you glow blue so they’re obvious too.

Most?.. Then why almost every time when I try to interrupt enemy’s heal they pop out text like “Block”, “Evade” or just instacast?

Because most doesn’t mean all. You don’t try to interrupt Shelter for example, unless you can penetrate Blocks (hello Well of Precognition).

That’s chrono’s utility, not mesmer. And I don’t think that HoT will release in a month.

ASP.8093:

It goes back to why people took Halting Strike (the damage part of PB) over Mental Torment (+20% Mind Wrack damage) pre-patch: it’s a way to diversify your damage a bit.

Power Block makes Diversion a damaging ability. It also makes both of double-ranged shatter’s #5 skills do big damage.

Hitting an interrupt can be tricky, but quite often the best time to shatter is in response to an enemy’s attempted burst. At which point they’re rapidly spamming skills trying to hit you as hard and fast as possible. I’ve had a ton of luck with Power Block in that situation.

^ This is absolutely true ^ I totally agree with this assessment.

halting strike (the damage from power block) does crazy amount of damage that is AFTER they nerfed it once already. That alone makes it worth while.

Short answer is that it depends.

In many builds, power block is great. Most Mesmer builds have at least solid access to interrupts, and that makes it a good source of damage and control. Even though most healing skills aren’t interruptable, there are a lot of tasty things that are.

Drake’s breath: long channeled skill, normal cooldown of 5 seconds. You can triple the cooldown of this skill.

Cone of cold: long channeled skill, staple of ele healing, normal cooldown of 10 seconds. You can increase the cd of this skill by 1.5×.

There are others on other classes of course. Warriors have stuff like their burst skills, rush, hundred blades. Engineers have…well, engies maybe aren’t the best example. Rangers have rapid fire, necros have most of their toolset, thieves…not much either.

Overall, it’s a good trait in a lot of situations. It’s also not always an optimal trait, especially if you’re specifically trying for maximum burst. It shouldn’t always be taken, but it’s almost always a solid option.

Fay.2357:

thieves…not much either.

Against most thieves, tho it’s still “nerfed” as will not affect their weapon skills, but the weakness is really nice if you can let them eat a rupt during their.. burst.. do thieves have burst or just constant high dmg… nvm..

Sustained burst.

I think Fay’s point was that Thieves have almost no skills with a noticeable activation time. So it’s hard to even proc Powr Block on them in the first place, unless you get lucky, and even then you won’t get the recharge increase effect anyway.

tobascodagama.2961:

Sustained burst.

I think Fay’s point was that Thieves have almost no skills with a noticeable activation time. So it’s hard to even proc Powr Block on them in the first place, unless you get lucky, and even then you won’t get the recharge increase effect anyway.

With SA DP Thieves, the usual poo+leap is a nice thing to rupt, can screw them really hard

Power Block also works great against thieves attacking within a chaos storm. While the CD increase doesn’t matter, the damage on proc and weakness can really do a number on them if they aren’t careful.